 Good morning, and welcome to the third meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee for 2024. We have no apologies this morning. Our first item of business today is a decision on taking business in private. The committee is asked to decide whether to take agenda item 4 in private today. The committee is also asked to decide whether to consider in private future meetings. The Scottish Government's report on the review of poverty and inequality commission resignations and the committee's follow-up on its inquiry into addressing child poverty through parental employment. Our next agenda item is an evidence session on homelessness and temporary accommodation. I welcome to the meeting Gordon MacRae, assistant director, communications and advocacy, Shelter Scotland, who is joining us in the room, and Nicky Brown, head of homelessness and household support, City of Edinburgh Council, Michael Cameron, chief executive, Scottish Housing Regulator, Jim McBride, head of homelessness and complex needs, Glasgow City Council and Gavin Smith, service manager for housing access at Fife Council and a member of the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing officers, known as Alachol, who are all joining us remotely. I thank you very much for attending today and a few points to mention about the format of the meeting before we start. Please wait until I or the member ask him the question, say your name before speaking, and don't feel you have to answer every single question. If you have nothing new to add to what has been said by others, that is okay. For witnesses online, please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphone on before you start to speak. You can indicate with an art in the chat box in Zoom if you wish to come in on a question. I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible as we have around one hour. We will now move to questions, and I will invite members to ask questions in turn. The first question is coming from myself. Can you provide a brief overview of the reasons for the increasingly high number of households living in temporary accommodation? For individual councils, can you describe the specific pressures in your area? The first one that I am going to come to is Jim McBride. Good morning. The issues for Glasgow are probably capture a number of areas that have probably magnified to some degree over the last number of months. Domestic homeless population is very much influenced by the cost of living crisis, and a number of changes to home circumstances. A lot of what we are seeing is as it floaked. Many of the people presenting are household breakdowns, and a number of factors are also aligned to private rented sector accommodation coming to an end. We have also laterally, probably since June till now, seen a dramatic and substantial increase in positive to remain cases, both those coming from years properties and those coming from the home office backlog. I think that when we take those into account, certainly from June until now, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people presenting within Glasgow as homeless and there are probably the main profiles. Local connection has had an impact on the legislation although I welcome it. It certainly has meant that we are looking at an additional, on average, 20 presentations to the city and out with that probably other area that, as of now, is those with leave to remain, who have come from local authorities in the north of England, boroughs in London and also Northern Ireland. Thanks very much, Jim, for that. I am now going to ask Nicky Brown to come in as well. Thanks very much, convener. Good morning, everyone. Similar to some of the issues that Jim raised there as well, particularly to Edinburgh as an acute shortage of affordable housing in the city as well. We also have a private rented market that is incredibly expensive in the city at the moment as well and very similar to the information that Jim provided. We have seen an impact of local connection cases within the city and we have also seen very recently a number of people moving to the city for a positive asylum decision as well. That has increased significantly over the last three months. Combined with the shortage of affordable housing and high private rents, people seeking assistance from us due to the cost of living crisis and those legislative changes, they are the main factors impacting on the number of people in temporary accommodation at the moment. Thanks very much, Nicky. I do not know if anyone else wants to come in on that. I think that it is important to remember where we have come from. Every year, since the ending homelessness together strategy was published, with the exception of the period during the pandemic when people could not be evicted and could not move, homelessness has gone up in Scotland. A number of people in temporary accommodation has gone up in Scotland. Before the pandemic, there were significant problems in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. It was mainly around unsuitable accommodation in Edinburgh and failure to accommodate in Glasgow. There were significant steps taken to address those issues, but it is crucial that we understand that this is not a recent phenomenon. In Shelter Scotland, we talk about being in a housing emergency. That was an escalation from a housing crisis that we are not trying to go back to a place where everything was sunny and happy. We are seeing a problem that already existed getting worse. We must understand the most recent phenomena that Jim and Nicky explained. We cannot lose sight of where we are starting from in the first place because it is that lack of investment over a number of years, the failure to have any meaningful strategy for children in temporary accommodation, for instance, that has just hampered the ability of front-line services to make long-term changes. I am now going to invite Gavin in. I think that it is important to say that there is a change in the profile of presentations. We need to mirror not everyone that is considered homeless in temporary accommodation. There is still over half the caseload in the countries making their own arrangements, so they are in some form. I think that the difference is that most local authorities have seen as that take-up of temporary accommodation has increased since the pandemic in post-pandemic period. People who used to make their own arrangements are now reliant on local authorities, which is why we are seeing the numbers that we are seeing coming through. Okay. Thanks very much, Gavin. I am now going to move on to Jeremy, who wants to come in. Thanks, Jeremy. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I wonder if I can aim this question at Michael Cameron to start with the virtual key. Can you provide an overview of why you think there is a systematic failure in homelessness services in some councils? Why are some homeless people not being offered temporary accommodation when they should be? How can homelessness people ensure their rights can be enforced? I appreciate that there is a lot there, but perhaps you can maybe unpack some of that for us. Of course. Good morning, everyone. Put simply, the demands in the homelessness system, the number of people becoming homeless and the level of need that they have exceed the capacity in the system to respond for some councils, the increase in capacity that is needed to respond to the current demands go beyond that which they can deliver. That is why we have made that judgment call that we see that there is systemic failure in the homelessness system in Scotland. The most acute impact of that failure is where a council does not have suitable temporary accommodation available when a person needs it. That results in the council reaching its statutory duty by having to place a person in temporary accommodation that does not meet the unsuitable accommodation order criteria or in more extreme situations cannot meet its duty to provide temporary accommodation at all, because it does not have any temporary accommodation available. In this context, it is difficult to see how there can be a universal enforcement of rights when there is not sufficient capacity in the system. Thank you. I do not know if anyone else wants to comment on this one. If not, I am happy to leave it there if anyone wants to hear. Okay. Thanks very much. Now, I am going to move on to Bob Doris. Thank you, convener. I may direct the first house to this question to Jim McBride, but I appreciate that Nicky Brown may also want to come in, given his opening statement. Before Christmas, I had a briefing from Glasgow City Council on the context of the housing emergency declared specifically in relation to the stream laying of the asylum process in the city. I also had a briefing from Mears. At that time, convener, I was told that there were roughly around 600, 500 or 600 households with a positive decision from the UK asylum process who had overstayed in their Mears tenancy and were imminently going to be pushed into the Glasgow homeless system, with many hundreds, perhaps thousands to follow. Could Mr McBride perhaps tell us where we are just now and the pressures that has put on the system in Glasgow? I do not know if you can hear me, but the issue with Mears just now at the moment is more working closely with him on a daily basis. We are absolutely at a crossroads, you are absolutely right. I think that we have exceeded the 600 number now, and I think that it is presenting serious difficulty for us to manage alternative accommodation options. The issue just prior to Christmas, obviously, the city administration committee report clearly highlighted the pressures and identified the fact that this is going to present an almost impossible challenge for us to manage the alternative accommodation options. Just now, we are trying to accommodate 10 on a daily basis, but we are also now finding that our ability to even identify hotel accommodation within the city is extremely pressed, and all it takes is for a particular event and or planning, seasonal planning around hotel capacity, where we are now at probably a stretching point that we are finding it difficult to continue to manage at the moment, it is on a day-to-day basis, and also trying to make sure that we do not have and we have got a response to four-slot changes as well. Can I ask a follow-up question on that, and I welcome back to Nicky Bryde shortly. I suppose that it is a financial question for Mr McBride. I would take the view at the point of transition when a positive destination, when a positive outcome is reached, there should be cash support from the UK Home Office and UK Government to support that transition. The UK Home Office have taken a very different view. That said, everyone's responsibility, UK Government, Scottish Government and all Scottish local authorities, not just Glasgow, to get together to do the best they can. If there was more money, could you use that money to find a solution, and what would that solution look like in the short term, and what conversations are on going in relation to funding? The short term funding is crucial, even if it just allows us some breathing space to provide accommodation. Sadly, that accommodation is not what we would wish to offer, but at the moment, the little option we have is to progress hotel accommodation a bit more to the medium term, certainly the council, and following the emergency committee meeting in December, we have been looking at alternative options to accommodation. We have six or seven test cases at the moment, looking at vacant accommodation just now within the city. That is going to take some additional capital spend, but it would then allow us to be able to look at alternative options to give us more of a medium term accommodation option. Some of them are vacant properties. One of the ones that we are looking at just now is a vacant nursing home. I think the council collectively is doing the best they can. We are also doing work around modular building, but all of those are going to be medium to longer term. I think that the committee would welcome a note on that, but finally, Mr McBride, when I was speaking to Mears, I put it to Mears that we should be talking about permanent accommodation from day 1 of an asylum seeking family moving to the city, and that means permanent accommodation perhaps in Glasgow, perhaps in one of the other 31 local authorities across Scotland, and doing that constructive work with them. Mears told me that they are not allowed to do that kind of work with them. Is that a missed opportunity, is that something that we have to do more of? I would suggest yes. I think that the reality that we have got just now is that it is crucially important that we try to identify potential options to settle the accommodation. We are working extremely well with the register of social landlords in Glasgow, but there are a number of competing factors that obviously have an influence and effect on availability, but as a principle, yes. I would come back in. I am conscious that Nicky Brown may want to put some additional comments on the record as well. Thank you very much. Probably just to add that for almost everything that Jim said, we are in the same position, whether it be looking at medium-term solutions, whether it be some difficulties in the short term, and not only sourcing accommodation, but the cost of temporary accommodation as well. As Jim pointed out, the accommodation that we are accessing for these additional presentations is likely to be bed and breakfast or for hotel accommodation. I appreciate that you wanted a note on that. I wonder if it was acceptable to the committee that maybe we could get a joint note between myself and Jim that could maybe highlight the areas in both cities. Yes, that is absolutely fine. I am perfectly happy to accept that. Okay, thanks very much. I am now going to invite Paul O'Kane in. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the panel. I want to have a good start with the question to Gordon McRae. Just on the issue of a housing emergency, so obviously you referenced it in your first answer, and we have Glasgow and Edinburgh City Council and other local authorities who have declared that emergency. It is not language that the Scottish Government has chosen to accept or use in terms of the definition. Some people would argue that it is about semantics here, but I just wonder if we can have your view in terms of is there a housing emergency and should that be defined nationally? When we talk about housing emergency, what we are trying to reflect is the shift from what was described before of a failing housing and homelessness system that we saw pre-pandemic to one that is now systemically broken and for which there is no real plan from the Scottish Government or the UK Government to address. We think that it is housing emergency because those are record numbers of children in temporary accommodation, record numbers of open cases. We are not seeing the flow through within the homelessness system, so whilst we can do more and there are some good examples of stopping people from becoming homeless in the first place, once people enter the homelessness system, they are too rarely coming back out the other side. The Scottish Government accepts that there is a housing emergency, I think, in the council areas that have declared it, but it does not accept that there is a national emergency. I think that that is a slightly semantic point because, if Glasgow and Edinburgh and catch a cold, the rest of Scotland feels it. It is a question of priorities. What we find difficult to square is the statements of good intent from ministers that are not backed up by resources to cut the capital budget by 26 per cent when the overall capital budget cut is only 10 per cent over the two years, which is actually four per cent one year, does not square with the statements around Scotland where everyone can have a safe warm home, the housing to 2040 strategy now seems dead in the water as far as we can send in homelessness together. It does not really appear to have much meat on it anymore. We have a housing bill coming up, which, although the many areas around prevention duties and other things, will not address the issues that you are discussing today, explicitly will not have a significant impact on that emergency. We feel there is a bit of dissonance that has entered into the debate about housing and homelessness. We have a debate within government about what is going to happen in the future, and then there is activity on the ground in councils and elsewhere, just trying to cope with the scale of the emergency that they see every day. I wonder if Jim McBride or Nicky Brown would want to comment on that point that whilst Glasgow and Edinburgh have declared those emergencies, the Scottish Government has not. Would there be a better unity of purpose if those local authorities did not recognise that housing emergency more formally? Certainly, in terms of the house emergencies, we have been very specific about the reasons that we believe as an organisation that there is a housing emergency in Edinburgh. Those are very clear when it relates to primarily the shortage of affordable housing and the number of people in temporary accommodation, although there is probably more to it than that as well. I think that our position is really clear, and I guess we are touching on some of the stuff that Gordon has just said there as well. I think that those points generally within the sector are well recognised as well. I think that most people within the sector and probably within government will recognise that there are significant challenges in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, and as previously stated, they have been well documented and highlighted. We are in the process of preparing a housing emergency action plan at the moment that we will present to our committees in the coming months. I would imagine that there will be requests for further discussions with the Scottish Government about how we can jointly resolve some of those issues. I don't know if I can comment. I would just absolutely echo everything Nicky said. We certainly have a draft action plan under wages now as well to try and address and mitigate some of the challenges, but, in principle, I would echo what Nicky was saying. Obviously, in December of last year, the regulator's update said that there had to be added urgency to the Scottish Government bringing forward issues to address the problems that we are already discussing this morning. In general terms, it would be useful to get your sense, Michael, of whether that added urgency has been accepted and responded to, and I suppose what more could be done in this immediate period. Obviously, we published our update in December. We have had a number of discussions with the Scottish Government since then, partly to focus around what might be brought forward for wider discussion at the group that is looking at the short-term supply challenges. That is where the focus needs to be. The immediate efforts have to be around increasing the availability of homes to let people who are homeless and for that to be done quickly. That is challenging because to increase supply obviously takes time when you are looking at developing new homes, but there are questions around whether we can accelerate programmes of purchasing properties. The acquisition programme that the Scottish Government has announced is a scope to expand that even further to give local authorities the added capacity as quickly as possible to start to address some of the backlog of people who are in temporary accommodation. I believe that Gavin would like to come in as well. There is no doubt that the issues in Glasgow and Edinburgh are found, but it is not to restrict the attention to that. Argyllin but declared a housing crisis before, so there is a rural dimension to it as well. In Surrey bilateral, it shows that 12 to 14 local authorities are routinely breaching a lot at risk of breaching that. My own local authority, Fife, is well publicised on the brink of declaring housing emergencies. I think that I will echo what Nicky and Jim have said, but it is just to make sure that the committee is aware that it is not just a major city issue because it exists across the country. Kate, thanks very much for your contributions. Sorry, Gordon. Did you want to just mention one very short thing? It is just important when we are talking about housing emergencies that we realise that this is not about councils failing. This is about the system not working. The emergency is not about a performance management of local authority services, but it is about the interaction between private supply, rental costs, welfare benefits, the whole system. It just means to be cautious about almost raising the expectation that councils alone can fix the scale of the problem. Now, we are going to focus on stock management, new house, supply and budgets. I am going to invite John Mason in. If I could just start with a follow-up to something that Mr McCrae said, you said that the budget for a house building is reduced, but the Government's answer to that seems to be that a lot of that was financial transactions money, and it is not the main capital budget. That money has been even more severely reduced, so how would you respond to that? The financial transactions capital is mainly used for things like the mid-market rent. That, as I understand it from the evidence that the cabinet secretary gave, has been taken out of housing and put into the Scottish National Investment Bank to protect that policy priority. What that means is that, although the mid-market rent has a limited impact on the number of people in temporary accommodation, it does reduce another avenue for people who now whose only real avenue will be mainstream social housing. It is not my understanding that the afforded housing supply programme in terms of the more homes money, the money that goes to social housing, has been protected. I know that the Glasgow and Edinburgh transfer of funds has been frozen, but that is also a real-terms cut in and of itself. In your evidence, you suggested that there is a lower turnover of social lets or lets from RSLs. Can you give us a bit more about that and why you think that that is the case, because presumably people are dying at much the same rate as they always did? In our national report on the social housing charter, which we published in August of last year, we did report that social landlords are seeing a lower turnover of homes than they did before the pandemic in 2020. Around 1,700 fewer homes became empty during 2022-23 than in the previous year, but nearly 5,000 fewer than in 2019-20. We also reported that homes were on average empty for 56 days, and that was significantly up from 32 days in 2019. It is difficult to say exactly why existing tenants are less inclined to move or give up their tenancy. Of course, that could reflect the success of the work that landlords do to help people to sustain their tenancies, or it may be that existing tenants are less keen to move during a period of cost of living crisis when there is economic uncertainty and when other options for them may be restricted to. However, whatever the reason for that slow down and turn over, that means that social landlords have fewer homes available to people in need, including those who are experiencing homelessness. Landlords can and do provide incentives and encouragements to tenants who may be under-occupying larger homes in particular to encourage them to move. Of course, that is entirely dependent on the tenant being prepared to do so. However, while the demand for social homes significantly exceeds supplies, such measures are likely to have only a very limited impact at the margins. Overall, whether people move or stay does not affect the total number of houses available, does it? It does not affect the total number of houses in the stock, but it does affect the number of houses that are available to let to new tenants. Landlords last year, around 50,000 homes became available for them to let. However, when you look at that number against the numbers that are on housing lists, there are more than 30,000 households that become homeless every year who require accommodation. When you add in some of the challenges that colleagues have touched on around people coming through the asylum-seeker system, you can see that that number is some distance away from what is required to meet the needs in any one year. Thanks, convener. I put a notice in the chat before Michael covered a couple of points. I just wanted to say that it sometimes lets or turn over the lets to reduce some of the really, really positive work that organisations are doing around the prevention of homelessness, so I apologise. That is the only point that I want to make really. Okay, thanks very much, Nicky. I am now going to invite Marie McNair. Thank you. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. I want to start with my first question. I will put it yourself, Nicky, and then I will obviously put it out to Gavin. What scope is there for social landlords to use their void homes better to rehouse homeless people? It is noted, obviously, that your council reported in December that there are currently 1,360 void properties across the council. Can you give us a bit of background to the reasons why there are such a high number as a funding issue, the voids in low demand areas? Do you have a void strategy? What can be done to let such properties quicker? And to what extent are they suitable for homeless households? Thank you very much. I will take them in reverse order, probably. The vast majority of the properties that are void at the moment are generally homes, so they would be suitable for homeless households, absolutely. In terms of the number of voids we have now, we have made significant progress, so in answer to your point around, do we have a strategy? We absolutely do have a really strong programming work now to try and reduce the number of voids in the city, so obviously voids will be returned week on week, but we are down to just over 1,200 voids now, so we have made significant inroads into the number of voids that they have. There has been a real focus on that within the organisation. Some of the issues around the voids building up, I am sure most local authorities will have faced this about capacity within the market to repair homes. There will be legacy issues from emergency repairs only being done during the pandemic, for example. So there are some of the major challenges that we have faced, but what we are seeing now is a really strong programme where, as I say, we have made a significant reduction in that. What I would say is that one of the major focuses from the void strategy and programme that we do have is to make sure that as many of those homes as possible are being provided to homeless households. So the council has always had a target of 70 per cent to lets to homeless households, and what we are looking to do over the next 6 to 12 months is increase that even further to increase it to 80 per cent. What we do need to recognise is that there are other vulnerable groups that are not homeless, so for example people who have either mobility or health issues, or sometimes people who are overcrowded, situations that would in turn lead to them becoming homeless at some point in the future. Thanks for that. Gavin, do you want to come in? Just from a fine perspective? Yeah. A lot of what Nicky said, I was just ticking off my list, but I think everybody, the public perceptions of void properties, are somehow inefficient in the system. They are not. I have 499 at the moment. I know where each one of them is in terms of repairs, let-ins, delays, that kind of thing. So there is that issue. Just picking up on the previous point as well, some of the reasons for delayed reduced turnover is that local authorities are diverting more having to divert more properties to provide temporary accommodation, which is stifling turnover as well, and interruptions to supply chain. The question about can more properties be used to house homeless people, well yes they are, I think, Nicky has emphasised that we all have targets, we all got very challenging targets at the moment, but there is a mismatch in supply. Just taking the five example, we get quite a high turnover of retirement, shelter, very good specialist properties, that doesn't match the profile of people that are coming through the homelessness system. So no, not every void could be used, their five's approach is to develop a transfer-led approach to housing allocations. So we will look to get to maybe three allocations out of every vacancy that we get. So the void's process, like Nicky said, every local authority will work hard. It's a big business and budget implication to provide, so it's a big key driver. I would give this commission that every local authority will work as hard as they can to make the best use of their void stock. Gavin, can I quickly bring in Jeremy, who wants to come in on us to have an entry? Sorry, Vinish, though. Oh sorry, sorry. Gavin, in terms of what percentage are you giving to homelessness? At the moment, it's about 68 per cent in the last quarter. I'm certainly averaging about 65 per cent across the local authorities. I've got a question for Jim McBride. Jim, right now with the pressures of the capital budgets and high inflation in Brexit in a change to the house in the silent seekers policy with a perfect storm, but to what extent has historical policy set us up to fail? I would have to say that to some degree we are where we are, and whether you want to say it sets us up to fail is probably, I wouldn't want to necessarily suggest that's the case. I think the issue at the moment when you consider the factors, none of us anticipated a pandemic, a war in Ukraine, and now the impact on what's happening in the Middle East, a thing when you look at a lot of the external factors, they're all having an impact on our ability to actually turn boys' rounds. I think in terms of Gavin's point and Nicky's point, we also are aware and working with RSLs, we certainly have a slightly different discussion because our percentage ask is 60 per cent and we're not achieving that yet, but overall I think whether or not you want that, I wouldn't want to suggest that it's been a systematic failure in that sense, I think it's just been a combination of circumstances that's put us into a position where we are just now around about trying to manage particularly void properties and ensure accommodation for homeless households. Obviously like full stock transfer was imposed on Glasgow City Council many, many years ago, and it's surely a homeless duty on councils. We know housing stock is a conflict. Can you give us any comment on that, Jim? I think obviously we're having to continually negotiate with 68 social landlords in the city and I think what we're trying to do is target certainly a relationship with probably the top 14 certainly because of the level of housing stock that they generate. I think I have to say that over the last probably 24 months or so and certainly even during lockdown we have built up a very positive relationship with the RSLs but unfortunately at the end of the day we are still having to negotiate at that level rather than necessarily have our own stock so it does present challenge but I would have to say we've introduced a matching process. We now have a tracker for all our local letting plans and we have regular development sessions with registered social landlords so I would have to say at least the climate at the moment is about working together rather than necessarily competing challenges with trying to provide homeless households as well as waiting lists for the RSL so it has been a challenge but I would have to say the climate and the atmosphere over the last probably two years in particular has been extremely positive and we are continually building on that following an RSL session that we had in December with all the CEOs and we certainly have a working plan that came from that event. I really appreciate your comments. Okay thanks very much. I'm now going to invite Jeremy and thank you. Thank you very much. Without being too Edinburgh centric or clearly that is the most important place in Scotland. A question for maybe Gordon or Finneke. Obviously we've had the rent freeze here in the city now for coming up for a year but we're also seeing an increase when people leave their flats with rents going up. Is this having an effect on homelessness within the city? Are you noticing something and is this just an Edinburgh issue or Gordon is this happening across other parts of Scotland? It's certainly affordability is a more acute issue in Edinburgh relative to income so what we're seeing is that people are less willing to move in the private sector because they fear a hike but when people are leaving because maybe in their shared accommodation and one person leaves they're seeing that hike anyway so the ability to keep the home that they have is worsening. We have seen a continued increase in number of homelessness presentations where people have been in the private rented sector immediately before. I don't have the specific numbers for Edinburgh to hand but we see a direct relationship between the high cost of private renting and the struggles of households during the cost of living crisis to keep the home that they have and to find suitable alternative accommodation. If for whatever reason you're not able to keep that home either the landlord evicts you because they want to make a repair to the property and move a family member in, there's quite lax attempts to try and track whether those things actually happen but if you accept the eviction on that basis the ability of someone to stay in the city at a similar cost to what they were paying before is incredibly difficult and it is reasonable to expect that there's a direct relationship between those people who are presenting a homeless coming from the private rented sector and those circumstances. We did not call for a rent cap and we did not but we do want to see the protections from eviction and we want to ensure that those protections are maintained as best they can in the future because we think that that's what we're about to come to the end of that period and it's going to be another spike and just simply our courts and our other systems can't cope with a massive increase in eviction. Okay, thanks very much Gordon, I'm now going to... I don't know, sorry. Nicky wants to come in with anything extra on that. Thanks very much. I wouldn't necessarily add anything extra that I've been to say within the city at the moment, clearly the ability for us to support people into the private sector after a period of homelessness is incredibly difficult as well given the high cost of private rents in the city as well. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'm now going to invite Ross McClellan, thank you. Sorry, thank you convener. Sorry, my apologies. I'm bringing these to the councils and I'm actually going to start with Gavin Smith, if I may, being somebody that's from Mid Scotland in Fife. I'm glad you're highlighting the issues that we have in Fife and the rural area. For councils, particularly those that don't own their own stock, relying on social landlords to help permanent, rehoused, homeless households. So how are registered social landlords responding to the pressures on council homeless services and is there scope for improving joint working? I think every local area is different. I can give the example from Fife. Fife has a common housing register, has had for a number of years, it covers about 99 per cent of the, just over 99 per cent of the social housing stock in Fife. Andy, who's approach in Fife goes through the housing options plan and will be going to assess homelessness as integrated as part of that. So I returned to my content, Scottish Housing Regulator shows a very low rate of section 5 referral to other places, but if you look at allocations that the RSLs have made, it's far higher, it's going in the right direction. Now we've got an agreement around 40 per cent, but that's added to the other dimension, to that is the RSL contribution to temporary accommodation, which, since the pandemic, has increased. So I think most local authorities will reflect really positive relationships with RSLs in their areas, it has to happen. It's the only way to meet the best use and give the best customer experience, but each local authority will develop some different unloading, de-angas and others with different situations. Edinburgh has got ed index in the partnership around there, so it is very different, but my experience, certainly working with the CIH over the last week while, is that RSLs are getting better, I mean the contribution not just from responding to homelessness, but in terms of homelessness prevention, sustaining tenancies and various other bits of work that they can do. Is the scope to go further? Absolutely, it has to happen. Thank you very much for that. We've already heard, if you don't mind, from the other councils on this sort of topic, but if they could come in, if there's anything specific on that, that would be great, so that's basically from Nicky or from Jim. Nope, no more. Sorry, sorry. I was trying to get my R in the chat there. Probably just to say that through the Rappagee Housing Transition Plan that we've set out for the Scottish Government, previously our RSL partners agreed to provide 50% of their homeless to homeless households, and recently I've written to all of the RSLs in the city to ask if there was scope to increase that, and all of them have came back positively, and I've suggested that we'll increase their lets over the coming months to somewhere between 60% and 75%. So I'm just echo what Gavin was saying there previously, that there is a really strong partnership in Edinburgh. Their RSL partners are taking very seriously some of the challenges around homelessness in the city and are very, very willing to help. That's lovely, thank you. Also, the Scottish Government has provided money for a national acquisitions plan through the affordable housing supply programme to help by private homes for use to reduce the pressure on temporary accommodation. So again, I'm going to ask basically the three representatives from the councils if possible, because again, if I could start with yourself, Gavin. Have you, in fact, been using this funding? Has it had an effective short-term measure, and is this something that needs to be continued, and is there any downsides or anything that we should be aware of as to where this fund is not allowing the process to go? Not specifically in relation to the national acquisition fund. The Fife was already purchasing properties at 50 a year and has looked to upgrade that, so we are now aiming from a homeless strategy that was approved in 11 January for £150. Part of that will be funded through the national acquisition. It's very effective as a means of increasing short-term housing supply in terms of public subsidy. It can do more than building a new home, so where it's not one in isolation. The issues are market factors. Again, I talked about mismatches as need and supply. We've got high housing demand in Fife, certainly, around St Andrew's, Dunfermline, and just purchasing properties in that area is not possible without them competing with market pressures. Acquisitions definitely has to be part of a housing access strategy or housing access and homelessness strategy, but it can't be the only thing that can't diminish the wider supply issues. I just want to come back on that if I can, Gavin. I understand that it can't be held in isolation. I'm more concerned that is the access to the funding doing what it needs to do? In that perspective, is it just purely because it is not the private housing supply and the fund just doesn't go far enough, or is it just not able to do what it says on the tin? I think it's every day's, but most local authorities were acquiring anyway, so it's about scaling up schemes. I would say in Fife it's about, and that's the only one I could speak with real authority about, it's about the market providing what's there in terms of affordability. Thank you. Again, if I could ask for both our Edinburgh and Glasgow colleagues to come in as well, Nicky and Jim, if you could make your comments regarding the national acquisition plan and, again, is it doing what says on the tin and how is it affecting in your local areas, please? Whoever wants to go first, so we'll go Nicky first. Thank you. I would echo what Gavin said there as well, and I think that Edinburgh already had a really strong acquisitions programme as well. We've been doing that for a number of years now, so of course we will look at all funding and availability when we're doing that, but as I say, we had a strong pipeline where we're always buying properties anyway. We recognise the need to do that. Like Gavin was saying, there will be certain areas where it's much more expensive to buy an Edinburgh as well, and some of the things that we like to do with our acquisitions programme is to consolidate blocks, so we'll become the majority owner within the block or the majority landlord in the block as well. There's probably a number of factors. It probably is quite early days, and I think that, like Gavin was saying, that most local authorities would have already been buying properties as well, so the funding is welcome. I think we would have liked to see it maybe being separated slightly from the grant funding programme in some regards, but we'll continue to use whatever funding mechanism that's available to continue your already strong acquisitions programme. Thank you. Can I believe in Gordon the light's commonsure? Yeah, thanks. I think it's just on the national acquisition programme that came out of a recommendation from the task and finish group on temporary accommodation. First of all, the £60 million is obviously existing money. It's not new money. It's an allocation of... It's a pragmatic decision that the building of homes has taken too long to meet the temporary accommodation needs. I think just building on what Gavin and Nicky have been saying, yes, acquisition has always been part of the supply mix, but this programme is supposed to be specific about the pressures on temporary accommodation households, on temporary accommodation, especially larger households, so the ones with children. I think there's still some way to go in terms of local authorities getting past that last-in-the-block or buy-back approach to actually being very proactive to see where in the market can we find suitable accommodation specifically for those people trapped in the homelessness system. Last thing I would just say is just before the Scottish budget, we called upon the Scottish Government to make specific funds available for larger homes for children. I felt that it was important to recognise that there should be some scope to look at a longer period of time for compliance with some of the Scottish housing quality standards or some of the other barriers that may make certain acquisitions less attractive in the short term, but where local authorities are able to depreciate that over a longer period of time, it may bring some other properties into use. I haven't really seen that idea responded to so far by Government. That's very interesting, thank you. I didn't know if Jim wanted to come in if he had anything else to add to the councils, but other than that, I'm very happy with the answers so far. Just to really only thing I would add is that, like Gavin and Nicky said, we have an acquisition programme. We continue to develop it. As Gordon pointed out, our priority is for larger households, but the private rented sector is certainly with a 60 per cent reduction in the city. Nonetheless, we're aiming towards trying to also identify empty homes in short fronts, as well as potentially other stops across the council targeting larger families. Certainly, the acquisition programme continues in Glasgow as much as it is elsewhere, and it's still very much a prior. The only thing is that potentially there's a discussion under wages there about investment in existing housing stock as part of that as well, but I think that really followed some of the discussions that came from the event that we had as sales about just looking at every option possible to consider how best to maximise the acquisition programme. I'm now going to invite Bob Doddison. Thank you, convener. Just to follow on from Mr McBride's comments there about the acquisition programme, I know from my own case, what Mayor Hill Housing Association is very active in tracking potential properties in the private sector and directly trying to put homeless families in there. It would be very helpful, and it says in my writing to Glasgow City Council, convener, of course, to get a note about how that's mapped out across the city, what the numbers are looking like per housing association, particularly fungal enough in Mary Hill's Springboard constituency would be helpful, but I'll put that in now, Mr McBride. I suppose it's a budgetary question that I want to ask that we know the Scottish Government has the commitment still for 110 new affordable homes by 2031 and 3.5 billion pounds of investment during the lifetime of this Parliament. I know there's a separate debate about whether that is sufficient or not sufficient, but that comes down to politicians who have to set budgets, convener. We also know in the budget going forward there has been a slashing of the Scottish Government's capital budget by the UK Government, but also the Scottish Government has cut the budget in their own affordable housing supply. I would get drawn into the politics of that, but in terms of homelessness, what is the short-term impact of that, the short-term impact, but I suppose if the same money is spent over the lifetime of this Parliament, will there be a longer term impact or not? I suppose that that would make sense to direct that perhaps to Gavin Smith. Perhaps he's got a perspective from a lateral's point of view. Any interruption or reduction in the affordable housing supply, particularly the social supply, is going to have a lasting damage. We talked earlier in this committee about turnover and buy turnover. I attribute a lot of that three years later to the impacts of the pandemic, so I think it's not just in the social supply, it's also about talking again about the operation of the wider sector, the private rent side as well. There are opportunities and there we talked about the potential for the private sector to reduce. Those homes should become social rented homes in my view. One of the best opportunities to prevent homelessness is to buy the properties where the people are still in them, but there are a number of legal issues around that. Yes, there's an investment issue, but there's also a set of legal issues that the local authorities are wrestling with as well. I suppose is that in the short term or the longer term, because at phase value you can see a longer-term investment programme and disruption in that could cause poorer outcomes in the longer term, but in the short term what is the impact likely to be in that capital budget cut on homelessness? My personal view, that will be an increase in people demanding temporary accommodation or requiring temporary accommodation. That's what we saw during the pandemic when the building and construction has ceased work. If that slows down, the impact will be immediate in terms of temporary accommodation and we know everybody's experience of temporary accommodation is mentally and physically damaging to education, employment and other things. From my perspective, a personal one, any experience of the risk of homelessness or homelessness is damaging to individuals and families, so it depends what you're talking about in terms of housing supply. It will take a long time to recover, but in terms of individuals and families it will take even longer. Can I just push slightly further, Mr Smith? I'm not trying to box clever here at all. Undoubtedly there's going to be an impact and that impact is not going to be beneficial in the slightest and I get that, but is the type of impact you're talking about a revenue budget impact as opposed to a capital cut? What I'm trying to get in the shorter term, what the impact is likely to be on the capital cut and then I think once you've answered that I might be bringing in Mr McCree because I think he's sheltered probably some very strong views on that as well, would I imagine? Can I just interrupt here at this point in time and just see? I'm conscious of the time as well, so if we can be quite concise and succinct in our questions and our answers as well, we've got until roughly about 10 past 10 this morning and several members still want to come in. Okay, thank you. Sorry, thanks, Gordon, did you invite me? No, I'd asked Mr Smith just about if it's a cut to the capital budget in the coming financial year and Mr Smith is perhaps giving consequences for less revenue support and those are two different budget streams, I understand, and I just want you to put on the record what the short term impacts likely to be in the cut to the Scottish budget in capital terms rather than revenue terms. If I've misunderstood, can you not just apologise, Mr Smith, to add anything before Mr McCree comes in? I think it will undoubtedly mean local authorities and RSLs looking at the portable housing programme and revising their resource planning assumptions, resourcing what their business plans look like. I don't know if there's anything as you can say, but that's surely helpful. Mr McCree, and I will come back in. Okay, very briefly, I think in terms of capital it will mean more people in temporary accommodation for longer, it will mean increased homelessness and that's not just saying that the Scottish Government own strategy recognises it unless there's a flow-through of new capital then increased homelessness. I think it's also important to say on the revenue side that whilst there's been some cash protection for some specific budgets, the overall cut to local authority revenue means it's very difficult to see how those cuts don't get transferred into other areas and we know that when it comes to homelessness, one of the major drives is access to things like addiction services for people in the core homelessness sector, so it's not just the homelessness or housing support services, it's all the stuff that goes around it. So we would suggest that logically you can conclude that the Scottish Government have made these cuts in the full knowledge that will lead to increased homelessness. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much. Now I'm going to invite Jeremy Innes. Thank you. Thank you. Myri, one of the council representatives could answer his start with this. In addition to resources through local government settlement this financial year, the Scottish Government has provided £8 million to councils to implement their rapid rehousing transition plans and it's providing an additional £2 million to implement partnership plans with councils facing greatest pressure. Can you talk about how this funding is being used and how its impact can be maximised? Can I invite Nicky, if you've got any comments on that? Yeah, thank you very much. The rapid rehousing transition plan money over the years that's been in place has been incredibly helpful for us as an organisation. What we've done through the funding that's been provided is we have looked at increasing our prevention activity, we've created multi-disciplinary teams and looked at flexible funds for how we might help households avoid homelessness. I'm acutely a weary time convener as well and all local authorities need to provide a rapid rehousing transition plan update by June this year so I wonder if to save some time but except in the fact that as an organisation we accept that it's been incredibly helpful, we'd like to see it continued and it's had massive impacts and benefits in terms of some of the services that we've set up that we could provide a note for the committee. That would be great, thank you, yep, thank you. Accept that then, Nicky, thank you. I'm done. Okay, Jim, would you like to come in? Nicky, the point I was going to make was that we were obviously updating it and revising it so other than just wish the echo what Nicky was saying, we thoroughly welcome it and we've been concentrating on key points within the rapid rehousing transition plan but I think the update is going to be crucial in terms of redefining where we are in terms of the size pressures. Okay, thank you very much. Now we're focusing on the theme of homelessness prevention and support and I'm going to invite John Mason in on this. Thank you. Thanks convener, I realise we're at short a time, this is quite a big subject but I just wonder maybe I could aim at Mr McBride to start with because he mentioned a household breakdown as one of the reasons putting pressure on the housing system so are we doing enough to prevent homelessness happening in the first place for example trying to help households not break down? I would say we very much are. If I look at the housing option approaches for the city I mean last year we exceeded 12,000 the projections this year we suspect is probably going to be 14,000 and I think in the context of that a large part of what Glasgow Strike Develop is a health and social care connect model which is really around about trying to triage and manage inquiries and approaches and there's a significant impact and effort there on managing prevention. I think nonetheless that still means that the number of household applications is increasing year on year and it's over six and a half thousand last year so albeit that the approaches still translate into a significant number I do think the issue for myself around about the forthcoming prevention duties in many respects I welcome it but I have a caveat where I have a strong health warning attached to it and because I think the issue for myself the closest I can kind of compare it is around about the introduction of adult support and protection for the best of all in the world certainly for when that commenced very much the stakeholders and partners would just refer cases directly to social work I think what I have seen in terms of Wales and London I think the likelihood is is it's going to generate a significant increase in terms of certainly inquiries and approaches and before we can get into a position where wider stakeholders also take a view around about how to prevent homelessness in the first place but I think certainly we recognise prevention as a crucial part but I think it's trying to balance that with the scale of the level of need that we're experiencing as well. Okay and sticking with yourself a discretionary housing payments are they helping in any of this? We are and I think certainly it's part of our plan and we're working to look about how to extend that further so yes. Okay well unless anyone else wants to come in that's okay. Can I ask for anyone who's remotely wants to come back in there? Yeah can I just come back in very very briefly just to say that very much like Jim our organisation has placed a huge focus on the delivery of preventative services and one of the things that we're looking to do at the moment is integrate both our family support services welfare rights and debt services to ensure that we can provide the best level and wrap around the holistic support to people without risk of homelessness and probably just another point to make in relation to our work with our IGB partners. We are in the process as I've said previously about creating our housing emergency action plan and within that there is a very strong theme that we will link in the IGB partners for a variety of reasons to make sure that we've got the right housing for people, the right support for people and that we can get people out of the hospital and suit their accommodation as quickly as possible as well. Okay thanks very much Nicky. I'm now I believe is it Gavin, Gavin sorry for cutting you off there if you would like to come in thanks. No and I will be very brief just to remind the committee that all local authorities are working really hard on prevention but one form prevention also needs new supply for example talk to it relationship breakdown a significant amount of that is domestic abuse. It comes through the homelessness system so the need for one property comes in need for two you can replicate that across so just to make that point give me an apology. No thanks very much Gavin and now as I'm moving on and we're sort of coming to the end of our question so we're actually within time so well done everyone and it's focusing on sort of longer term issues as well so I'm going to invite Bob MacKinnon. I may not have got the memo convener I thought I was asking around theme 13 in discretion housing payments but I think Mr Mason mostly asked the question on the only follow-up of it half would be this £90 million in the coming year that the Scottish Government was anticipating and spending in discretion housing payments to mop up the mess of the UK government's bedroom tax that's a lot of money in the system is there a more effective way of using that using budget to terms it's quite a significant figure is that is a ways we could use that money more effectively. Can you indicate Bob who you're asking that question to? So it's only because Mr MacKinnon is in the room and he made eye contact there but I wasn't sure who bested to ask that to. I mean the easiest answer that is of course if we scrapped the so-called bedroom tax it would free up more money and obviously there's the potential of changes in Westminster government and we would certainly want to see that on the agenda. I think the Scottish script shelter will very much involve in the campaign to detect tenants in Scotland from the bedroom tax and I think it was the right thing to do but it does take up a huge amount of the discretion housing payments and fundamentally it's not enough money in the current climate. That's helpful. I think it's important just the record to point that Mr MacKinnon has mentioned as he should do of course the possible of a change of government at Westminster but it's also important to put on the record that any incoming Labour government has not committed to ending the bedroom tax either indeed Labour brought it in but that's now in the record. Is that just a comment Bob? I thought it was quite important. I think it was quite important. Moving on, I am now going to invite Katie Clark who's actually joining us remotely so thank you Katie. Hello, good morning and my question is to Gordon McRae and Gavin Smith because I believe their organisations are represented on the homelessness prevention task and finish group and as they'll know the Scottish government's response to the task group recommendations prioritised action that would have the greatest impact to reduce the numbers of households in temporary accommodation so is there anything further that you could say in terms of thoughts about how long term measures or the recommendations would impact on other working groups for example on the financing of temporary accommodation and if I could ask Gordon maybe to come in on that first. So I'll actually in the Shelter Scotland be co-chair of the task and finish group and temporary accommodation the recommendation that came out of that it wasn't trust our views it was co-produced with people with experience and other people across the sector the recommendation there was for the Scottish government to look further at the funding of temporary accommodation that would involve having to discuss it with the Westminster government because of the relationship between housing benefit or universal credit and the provision of temporary accommodation. Scotland is relatively unusual in the UK and so much of our temporary accommodation is in the social sector and that makes the profile slightly different. In terms of what the major term and longer term impacts are we think there's still a long way we can go to make better use of the properties we currently have so there's actually a suite of tools now local authorities have from the second homes, empty homes, private renting legislation we think taking a view that every property is potentially a home would allow us to drive more more change forward however the Scottish government's response on things like compulsory sale orders compulsory purchase orders compulsory rental orders you know how do you how do you mobilise those properties that are void in the private sector we think the timeline that the Scottish government are proposing for that is too long we'd like to see that accelerated especially in the upcoming housing bill. Thank you, does Gavin want to come in on that? Yeah, just for clarity, Elacille wasn't represented on that particular group and the chair co-chair with shelter the temporary accommodation one that was the provincial one was led by other people but just to echo what Gordon said I think it is that there is latency in the sector of long term empty homes there are dynamics in the private rented sector but the answer that is about investment for short and longer term in use and supply of social and affordable housing. Thank you and my next question I'm going to direct to Nicky Brown and Jim McBride if that's okay. In the longer term Scottish government plans to introduce a new statutory prevention duty how do you envisage this impacting on demand for temporary accommodation and as I say I don't know if Nicky would want to come in on that. Thank you very much, I think the engagement we've had with civil servants so far is that we are indicating that it would have an impact both on provision and temporary accommodation services but also a demand on our staff who provide housing advice and homeless assessment so you know in comparable areas that Jim referenced earlier where similar action has been taken to provide our responsibilities on partners what we've seen as an increase in the immediate term in terms of the referrals made in to homelessness services and whilst as an organisation we are incredibly focused on prevention and actually welcome the long term benefits to this what we are concerned about is the initial demand over the relatively short to medium term in terms of increase in both homelessness preventions and the seeking of housing advice. Did Jim want to come in on that I don't know? I just once echo very much what Nicky said my anxiety is probably more around about the once the legislation is introduced in terms of how we have to communicate more with stakeholders but I think I could understand why somebody would just the easier option would be just to refer to homelessness or certainly in Glasgow's context health and social care connect for advice or prevention around homelessness rather than necessarily try and manage to provide some guidance themselves to prevent it even coming towards homelessness for advice and guidance so I think it's it's certainly welcome it in the long term but I think the only thing I can equate it to is the introduction and address of poor implementation and I think until that settled then it was easy to root to where folk felt that the expertise and knowledge was rather than necessarily a discussion around about somebody's homeless or housing circumstances. I think Gordon might have wanted to come in. Very quickly just to say I think MSPs I would encourage you to look at the financial memorandum that comes with that bill because it's difficult to see how that would be delivered with an existing resource the prevention duty I'm talking about here and the recent history I've been discussing today is there's been expansion of duties on local authorities but a reduction in capital and revenue and that is this that is the single biggest problem that we're facing. Thank you. Thanks very much Katie and Gordon and this now concludes this evidence session so thank you all for attending and I now briefly suspend the meeting until I for the setup of the next agenda item. Thank you once again. Welcome back and next this morning is an evidence session with Social Security Scotland which will explore its performance and operation. Some members of the committee had the opportunity including myself to visit Social Security Scotland at its headquarters in Dundee earlier in the month which we found very informative and will provide useful background to this session. So I welcome to the meeting Gail Devlin, Deputy Director of Health and Social Care, Allie McPhail, Deputy Director for Strategy, Change, Data and Engagement and James Wallace, Deputy Director for Finance and Corporate Services so thank you very much for joining us today and Allie I believe you would like to make a short opening statement. I'm Allie McPhail, Deputy Director for Organisational Strategy and Performance with me today are Gail Devlin, Deputy Director for Health and Social Care and James Wallace, Deputy Director for Finance and Corporate Services and I think you know as you referenced the visit most of committee members are probably already met us in different sense and I'd just like to kind of set out for the record David Wallace apologies that he can't be here today obviously David would really want to have attended and supported this session. So as you said really pleased to be able to welcome you or some of you to our headquarters in Dundee a couple of weeks ago glad you found it useful from a personal perspective and found it a really informative session and I know that the cabinet secretary attended committee session last week and I was interested to hear the discussion in that setting as well and just more generally I welcome the committee's continuing interest in social security. So if it's okay I'm going to just make a few brief opening remarks and I promise I won't take long. So it's been just over six months since Social Security Scotland last appeared before committee during that session as well as highlighting achievements David Wallace our chief executive was open with members on discussing some of the challenges we faced and the actions that were taken to address them. Looking at our processing times the latest statistics for our disability benefits show that we've made real progress. In the last quarter we have processed more applications for adult and child disability payment in any period since the benefits launched. Since launch more than 137,000 people were getting adult disability payment with around £462 million paid out in cash. More than 71,000 children and young people were receiving child disability payment with £400 million being paid out for this benefit. These payments we believe are making a real impact. We are delivering disability benefits differently in line with our values and our charter. One of the differences in our service is how we evaluate the impact of people's condition on their daily lives. It's pleasing that in recognition of that our health and social care operations were awarded the policy into practice award that attained annual Hollywood Communications Scottish Public Service awards in recognition of their work integrating health and social care professionals into the civil service. Social Security Scotland is unique in employing qualified nurses, social workers and allied health professionals as civil servants while allowing them to retain their professional registrations. The skill and experience of our health and social care professionals is vital in generating a complete picture of our client's need when applying for disability benefits. We're seeing an increase in applications for our benefits supporting low-income families and these continue to be delivered effectively to those who need them. In November, we successfully launched the pilot of our 14th benefit, carer support payment and from February the eligibility for best art foods widens when it is estimated that a further 20,000 people will be eligible, which will mean more applications coming into the organisation. In the middle of December, payment of winter heating payments started and our internal data, which was published on the 9th of January indicates that over 230,000 heating payments have been made to date. Those payments continue and also over 30,000 child winter heating payments have also been issued. As I said, those payments will continue to be made and are based on information supplied to us by the Department of Work and Pensions. With the recent budget announcement, we recognise our responsibilities of the important work that we do with support of our colleagues in the Scottish Government and have ahead of us as we continue to administer the benefits to the people of Scotland effectively with dignity, fairness and respect. Just a couple of final remarks. Of course, there is work still to be done, but it's probably worth reiterating that we're really pleased to see that our recent client service shows that 94 per cent of people rated their overall experience of receiving benefits as good or very good and that 93 per cent of our clients continued to say we're to feed back rather than we're treated with kindness by Social Security Scotland. We look forward to answering your questions today. Okay, thanks very much, Allie. On behalf of the committee, can we pass on our regards to Dave Wallace? I also congratulate you on the awards that you have received, so I'm very well done to you and the team for that as well. We're now going to move on to questions, and I'm going to invite some of the members in to do that. The first is based on the theme of operational expenditure, and I am now going to invite John Mason in. Thank you. Thanks very much, convener. My apologies. I didn't make the visit to Dundee. I was very keen to come, and unfortunately something happened that stopped me. On the question of your operational expenditure, I think you've actually been within budget the last few years, which is commendable. Can you tell us where you are in the current year, 23, 24, and how you see the budget for operating costs being in 24, 25? I will, if that's okay. Thank you, Mr Mason. There are a couple of points that I would need to make. I think that our budget management is good, so Audit Scotland and their most recent audit report on the organisation 2223 report on the audit social security Scotland remarked on their key findings that we had effective and appropriate arrangements to secure sound financial management, so I take a lot of assurance personally from Audit Scotland on that around our financial management processes. Our financial management is fairly agile. It has to be. We pay a lot of attention to our in-year management of budgets. Our budgets are subject to risk. We are the back end of a large Scottish Government digital agile programme to implement the systems and processes for social security or our part of social security in Scotland. That creates uncertainty, and in particular over the last few years social security Scotland has grown at a really significant pace. In particular, that's given us a risk around staffing. There was a period of time, if I go back four years ago, where we had, I think, 500 staff. We pretty much doubled in size every year, and that creates huge budget uncertainty, particularly in the context of when we set budgets. The Scottish Parliament considers budget for 24-25, for example, in January of 2024. The work that social security Scotland does to inform that budget to the Scottish Government usually happens in the summer, so the summer of 2023. We're basically setting a budget in the summer of 2023 that we potentially won't be spending the back end of it until 2025, so we're 18 months to 20 months away from the point that we spend that money. In terms of budget this year, there will be some amendments through the spring budget revision to our opening budget. They are planned amendments, so the main element that you will see when you see the documentation is the transfer of money to the social security programme. We did begin the 2023-24 financial year with money that was allocated for improvement to our systems, to our processes. We spoke to the committee around this before in terms of support and improvement on performance times, protecting our operation, continuing to develop it. We work very closely in partnership with the social security programme, as you would expect. Instead of standing up a new digital implementation programme, we would transfer that money to the social security programme and the Scottish Government, who would deliver on our behalf the priorities of the social security family, we call it, so that you will see that partnership working in our budgets. In terms of further changes, there is one other budget that you will know in the 2023-24 budget, and it is as a result of negotiation by the social security programme, again, that partnership working with the DWP against our formal agreements budget. It has negotiated a saving of £4 million against the amount that we would have spent on formal agreements, so that is a very real saving that has been negotiated, and you will see that coming through our budget as well. Looking forward to next year to 2024-25, we are satisfied that the budget will sustain our operation and allow us to continue to do the things that we need to do, so the launch nationally of care or support payment, the launch of the pension age winter heating payment, is preparing for the payment of pension age disability. If I could follow up then. Do you have a target as to what percentage of the benefits you pay out should be used in your costs? I was looking at the DWP website and I think that around 3 or 4% of their benefits are actual operational costs. Would that also be your target? It is not because our benefits are very different. The largest benefit by value that the DWP administers is the state pension, and it is a very easy benefit to administer. You come on at a pensionable age and you go off when you unfortunately pass away, so the state pension is fairly easy. Our benefits are not like that. Adult disability, child disability, care or support payment, are complex benefits. I accept that things are changing at the moment. You are taking on new stuff, so it is quite hard. Should there not be some kind of target? Otherwise, is there not a danger that costs run away with themselves? We look at charities and we say that if they are spending 10% on admin, there is something wrong. I quite agree. Social security is very aware of our responsibilities under the 2018 act to deliver value for money. Value for money is three components. The economy of our operation, the efficiency of our operation and the effectiveness of our operation. The type of measure that you describe as a measure of economy only is not a measure of value for money, so I would caution against using that as the only measure to assess the financial performance of the organisation. Do you have a benchmark? We do. We have published it, so the Social Security programme business case outlines our estimate of what devolved benefits are. The same benefits cost DWP to administer, and we estimated that to be 6.3 per cent of benefit expenditure. That is a Scottish government-prepared estimate. That is not a figure that DWP published, but it was prepared by some very clever analysts using figures in the public domain. Our estimate in the programme business case was that we would probably, in a steady state, be at around 5.2 per cent of benefit expenditure. I should caution as well that that is not to say that we will be cheaper than DWP. That is not what I am trying to say. All I want really is a figure, so next year, when you come back, I can say have you matched the 5.2 per cent? Absolutely. On track, we are on track. Okay, thanks very much. I believe Jeremy wants to come in with a supplementary there. Just very quickly, a couple of things. We have looked previously to the committee in regard to the number of contractors that you have. I think there is about 3,800 full-time equivalent. How many of them are contractors? I was not at the Dundee visit last week, but I have been twice. Can you tell us how many of the deaths in the Dundee office are used on a daily basis? How much are people working at home compared to being in the office? Is it a large office? It is. I will cover the contractor's point first. In terms of contractors, I would need to write to you with a specific number, Mr Balfour, but what I can tell you is that primarily the contractors in Social Security Scotland have been working in our chief digital office. They are hard to recruit skills, coders, business analysts and business architects. They are people that we have struggled to get, given just the competition for those types of digital skills. At our chief digital office here today, he would tell you about the programme that he has been running to very closely with the people services in our organisation. Can you just talk about contractors? We have only got an hour or so. If you could just write to me, that would be helpful. I will do. I am a bit okay. We are perfectly happy to set something in line. I am the Dundee office. I would need to get you a specific up-to-date figure on that as well, but I can tell you that our hybrid working policy, and it is a hybrid working policy that we propose to staff that it is two days a week on average that they spend in the office. We have accommodation roughly across our estate for 1,500 people. You have quoted the figure in terms of staff numbers that we have, and that is why we have gone for the two-days hybrid policy. We have got no intention of expanding our estate, but I can get you a specific up-to-date figure. You can let me have it. I am working to help you. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much. Yeah, Ali, if you would just like to come in. Just in terms of how we work now slightly differently, and I know that the kind of temptation is to look at descritalisation. That is probably not the way the organisation is kind of pivoted and post-pandemic. Yes, we have a lot of people who come in and they sit at the desk and they do their jobs, but we also have a lot of people who will come in and they will collaborate. They will use the collaborative spaces that I am sure that you have seen when you were in Dundee. We have also got a lot of people using the kind of down-to-ear surfaces that are made with stakeholders, meeting spaces, so that kind of snapshot of how many people are sitting at a desk at any point in time is probably not representative of how many people are engaging with us in our office environments. So it is a measure, but it is perhaps not the only measure of how successful we are in terms of that kind of hybrid working that James has referenced. Okay, thanks very much. Now we are moving on to focusing in on process and times, and I am now going to invite Paul O'Cain in. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the panel. Waiting times are obviously something that this committee has been particularly interested in. In June of last year, David Wallace told us that he hoped that by the end of summer 2023, average processing times for child disability payment would be under the 80 mark. We have seen statistical releases obviously for September, showing that that was still being missed by 26 days, and in about 160 days it then did subsequently come down in October to just over 80. I wonder if you can give us the most up-to-date picture of whether that under-80 mark target that was outlined by Mr Wallace is being maintained? Yes, so it is probably worth starting by saying that there is always going to be a lag between what it is that we are able to publish and what we are kind of seeing through our management information. If I can perhaps just start by saying that when we spoke to you in the summer or at the very start or at the beginning of what was a journey of improvement and an awful lot of what we spoke to you about then was both the improvements that we were keen to put in place but also an organisation that was growing in terms of its capability, confidence and ultimately, hopefully, that seeing its way through into productivity. We are working through that journey and it is pleasing to see that our productivity is increasing. Unfortunately, I cannot quote management information to you, but what I can say is that what we are seeing internally are positive signs in relation to both the confidence and capability of our staff feeding through into increased productivity in relation to how we are processing benefits. Of course that is not the only measure and I would say that just the kind of holistic client experience and client outcome is important as well, but I absolutely hear what you are saying in relation to those wait times. I cannot give you a different number from the number that is in the public domain. Unfortunately, I just cannot do that, but what I can say if it gives assurances that we are seeing improvement and we are seeing improvement through our metrics that we use internally in terms of our MI in relation to how that is feeding through into our productivity. I do not know if there is anything that you want specifically. Are you confident that those numbers will continue to fall and remain below that 80 mark when we have the next set of management information provided? I think that they are trending in the right direction and I think that I would be hesitant to say that 80 days is the number that we will hit when we hit the next publication. I think that what I would say is that we are trending in the right direction in terms of that. I wonder if you might be able to comment on what you think is most effective in terms of the work that has been done to bring those wait times down, because you obviously referenced that work is going in to bring in those wait times down. I wonder if you might say what you think is making the most difference. I will perhaps invite Gail to say a couple of things. I would restress the thing that we said in June about having brought hundreds of people into the organisation brand new and having to upskill them into what, as James has referenced, is an incredibly complex set of benefits. We are now 18 months in certain instances to that journey and our staff are much more capable, much more confident and much better able to run through the processes. Naturally, that has got us to a better place in terms of our productivity and that will follow through in terms of our organisational performance. That shouldn't be undersold or lost in the narrative around improvements to systems and various different other things. Not that I'm saying that those things aren't important, but the organisation is still young and it's still building its capability and I think it's worth recognising that. But Gail, I don't know if there's anything more that you want to say just in relation to some of the specifics. Thank you. In addition, I think that you've covered most of the points there, but there is no one single piece of improvement that impacts. It is a multidisciplinary approach that we do take. Using our in-house health and social care team is particularly supportive in that faster decision making but also making the right decision. Those are integrated, the professionals are integrated into that operational environment and colleagues are learning, learning about the complex disability benefits that we do deliver and learning about the decisions around those. We've also listened to feedback that you'll have seen when you visited, indeed some of you that were there, from our colleagues and the professionals who are sharing information with us in order that we improve that flow of supporting information to the organisation and we've made changes to the application form to support that too. We're also really able to flex staff in the particularly busy periods, much more pragmatically than we have in the past and we're concentrating in deploying that health and social care expertise in the right places at the right time in the overall decision making journey. I wonder if I might just, on that point about the developments that have been made, particularly in terms of adult disability payment, we know that there have been challenges around information and the availability of information from a client coming in quickly. I wonder if you might be able to say something about what improvements have been made in that process to ensuring that if somebody has information that they shared it as quickly as possible. There are several pieces of guidance and support that we do offer as an organisation, so our local delivery colleagues are very active in the community and every local authority area supporting clients to provide that information. We've improved on the application form, the details of what good supporting information looks like. I think that we mentioned that at committee the last time we were here, we were doing that and we have made significant inroads in that local authority relationships with teams within local authorities working in education healthcare settings and with welfare rights advisers again supporting clients in the ability to bring that information forward. There are a range of initiatives and improvements that we've made to allow us to gather that but also to support our clients in providing the right level of information. One of the changes that we were going to make was rather than the claimant having to get the information, the agency would get it and one of that was around GP reports. There was a bit of concern whether GP's would respond quickly, whether the amount of money they were paying for the report was enough. I'm just wondering if you could update us around that. Is one of the delays because GP's are taking longer to reply and just your experience around that? One of the things we spoke about in the visit in Dundee was about that interface between ourselves and GP's. It's probably worth just reflecting on that. That has been in place and it's been significant for us because it gives us that secure exchange of data. It's not new technology that we've put in place, it's technology that was already used in the healthcare sector in relation to how GP's exchange data with hospital services. That's been helpful for us but I would have to say that we have been a bit of a journey with it both in terms of how we use it and how GP's interact with us through that. We've done an awful lot with practice managers and GP's themselves about making sure that they understand how that's best used, the information that we need and how we can best communicate. We have done an awful lot just in terms of that engagement piece but it's been an evolution. I should say that with an awful lot of what we've done, this has been a journey of continuous improvements since launch as understanding what it is that we need, how we best obtain it, how we best use that, how we best engage with the communities, whether it be GP's, whether it be social care sector or third sector providers in terms of how we can best provide that. I think that you'd referenced the fee that should be provided to stakeholders now as well. It's being quite helpful in relation to that. So it has improved. Can you give us some figures? What was it like? Again, going back to Mr Mason's point, it's difficult for us as a committee, I can say nicely that it was a very good civil servant answer but I'm not sure I'm any further forward. Can you tell us what it was like two years ago, last year, this year, so that we can see how that improvement and what is your target for next year? Because it's difficult on what you've said so far to know yes for improvement, but is it half a day better or is it substantially better? Just to clarify what you're asking, so you're asking in terms of the time it takes for the exchange of information and the success rate in relation to that. I don't have that information to have getting less in if my colleagues, but what we can do is we can potentially follow this up with a note that provides some further context. The other aspect that you probably need to write to us on as well is very much. One of the changes that we were going to make was that there was going to be much less having to have the individual in to have them assessed medically. What percentage of people that make a new application or have been transferred from PIP are now being examined? Do you know how many percentage of people you're dealing with? In terms of that consultation piece, I don't know, do you have that information? Thank you. I don't have the specific figure, I can share that with you in a written note, but it's a very small proportion. The system was not designed to automatically go to a consultation face-to-face, and that was designed very much, as you know, with our clients and in that service design piece, so it's a very small proportion of our clients to undertake a face-to-face consultation. They can request that, but our first port of call is to assess the information that they have given us and make a decision on that basis before we move to that consultation piece. If you could have numbers up, it would be very helpful. And I'm now going to bring in Ross and Cole, thanks very much. Thank you, convener, and hello everyone. Nice to see you again. Thank you very much indeed, and a great visit the other week. I'm going to be blunt. Why does it take longer to process child disability payments than it does to process adult disability payments? Okay, thank you. Okay, so I should probably start by saying we are putting the same attention and we're putting the same improvements in place for child disability payment as we are for adult that it's appropriate to do that. I mean, they are different, but where it's appropriate to do that, we are doing that, and I would say similarly, we're seeing encouraging signs in relation to our productivity and our staff in terms of that confidence that I'd spoken about earlier on, so I'll not labour that. What I'd say we are doing is we are working to try and understand the kind of case load better in relation to how it differs from adult disability payment. So being open, we've got a slightly higher number of complex older cases within that child disability case load, cases where we need to work through certain issues before we can make a decision on a payment thereafter potentially. Issues such as identifying and conforming parental responsibility, which quite clearly can be quite challenging in some instances. But while we're doing this, we continue to engage with our clients, so it's not as if we're doing it and we're leaving them in a vacuum. We are actively engaging because we're trying to work through that. Understandably, that can take some time. So what I would say is that is one example, and I don't know if Gail wants to add to that just in terms of the differences between child and adult. The simple answer is disability benefits are complex, and child disability in particular is no different. It is a complex landscape. We've got a duty to consider all the information that we are provided and collect, and we can and often do collect that from a broad range of sources. Quite dissimilar to adult disability payment in some cases, we are collecting information or our clients on behalf of their child give us information from multiple professionals across the education and schools, clinical and medical professionals, mental health specialists and community services, and it's our absolute obligation to consider all of that information. It's our duty to do that, and that does take time to make a proper assessment of the impact on the daily living needs of a child. Thank you. That then follows on, if you don't mind, because obviously the same concerns that maybe we would have as a committee with getting information through the GP gateway process. There needs to be a movement towards making sure that those numbers come closer together, because obviously we would want to make that as smooth a process as possible. The more information you've got to gather, the more information you've got to check, the more important it is to make sure that those communication streams are done in a timely manner. How are you making sure that we can move this forward in a way that we'll actually bring those numbers together? Is there anything that can be done to ensure that the information that you're getting is properly assessed but quicker and that the information that we need to get through external sources is as smooth and as quickly as possible? We just intervene here, having been at the visit as well, and we discussed the Sky Gateway process. I believe that it was an action point that I would suggest to the committee to take forward to write to the cabinet secretary for health and that why, in terms of primary care, GP services, actually using the Sky Gateway network, and I don't think that it's incumbent on Social Security Scotland to be pushing that agenda forward. So can I suggest that we write to the cabinet secretary for health looking into that and seeing how we can incentivise GP services to use that consistently? I understand that and my apologies, convener, if my question was not in the correct way. I accept that we have concerns with GP Gateway and I accept where we agreed, where I was thinking was if we were then getting information from education, if we were getting additional information that was not from my health process, I hope that that was as smooth as possible and it was that that I was referring to, not the Gateway process. If that means the same thing applies, convener, then I'm happy with that, that we as a committee also ensure that education and different sections within Government are aware of that smooth process that I would be happy with that as well. I'm happy for that to go forward, if that is the case, however, if it's highlighted again within Social Security. I'm welcome for Allie to comment on that, I think. I think that that is helpful, actually. I think that what I would want to say is that in terms of the improvement work that we're undertaking and the priority and the attention that we're giving child in relation to adult disability payment, we haven't put it to the side, so we are giving the same due care and attention both in terms of how we upskill our staff to get through the process and support our clients as we are to try and interrogate what we can do to streamline that process, work with various different stakeholders and providers of supporting information to make that as easy as possible and as efficient as possible. It's just taking probably just that little bit more time because of some of the complexities that you've discussed there, but please be assured that we are prioritising that work. Are you able to share any initial reflections on processing care support payment applications? Yes, so care support payment pilot started as planned at the end of November in three local authorities in the pilot area where Dundee City, Perthkin Ross and the Western Isles, so just in terms of initial reflections. I think that the first update that we provided through management information on our website published in December, I think it was the end of December, 160 applications had been received at that date, 55 had been processed and 25 payments had been made to clients at that point. Obviously, it's very small numbers at this stage and we are starting, we're continuing rather to see the applications flow through. It's a pilot, that's why I would say. As I would say, with any of the benefits we've launched, we are taking applications, we are processing and we're engaging with clients as we do that to learn their unique needs in relation to their circumstances, but also speaking back into our colleagues with experience in the programme and also a policy context in terms of how we can move this pilot forward or towards rather a national launch. There isn't a whole lot I can say other than that. It's going well for the small numbers that we've seen to date. Thank you very much. Hopefully, as time progresses, we'll get additional information. Thanks very much. Moving on to the theme of communications with clients, I'm now going to introduce Paul O'Kane. Thank you very much, convener. Again, I think that this committee has been interested in the challenges that have been in terms of receiving support and advice, particularly on the telephone. We seem to have stubborn and persistent issues in terms of telephony that persist from year to year. I wonder if you might recognise those persistent issues and just maybe give an overview of what further has been done to address them. In terms of the persistence, we continue to work to improve our services and I would probably disagree or I would probably challenge slightly that we would categorise those as being persistent to be completely honest. I think that we've made a real progress since the last time we discussed this when we set out some of the improvement actions that we were putting in place, particularly around telephony. I think that just looking at our client feedback, we're seeing that seven and ten feel it's easy to contact us within the organisation. Eight and ten feel receiving the right level of communication and around nine and ten said their experience of the overall application process was positive. I think that just in terms of that holistic point, I think that speaks quite positively of our client's view of how we're engaging with them. In relation to telephony, that's probably the core of the question that you're asking. We did embed the changes in the way that we handled the calls. Those have improved in terms of the real-time monitoring of call volumes. We're much more responsive now in terms of how we deploy our resource. In terms of our management information, it's fair to say that we are seeing the benefit of that and we're seeing the benefit across all our benefit lines. As you would expect, any organisation of our nature, these are some of the key metrics that we monitor and these are some of the key things that we engage with our staff around about in terms of that management of performance. It's an absolute priority for us in terms of how we both engage with our clients and our clients' ability to engage with us. It's a lifeblood of what it is that we do. In terms of that persistent issues point, I would probably challenge that a little because I think that we have made real strides forward in that space. I don't know if there's anything that my colleagues want to add to that. There's one point about the real-time data just to add to that. We have now telephony dashboards and David Wallace mentioned last time at committee that ability to deploy our planning team to look at variations in demand. That is embedded now and we have real-time alerts on the telephony system which allows our planning team to direct additional resources and have more flexible resources and we have more people trained on phones that are adaptable and flexible to be able to work busy crews and we can track peak demands. We will see that come through in improved call waiting times and it looks like that is improving internally in terms of our information. I think that it would be useful to committee to have that information as soon as it's possible to have it. Across 2022 and 2023, we can say that there has been a persistence in the issue, so if it has improved and there's data to show that, I think that that would be useful. I wonder if I can ask about partner agencies. If it could be quick and concise, I'm conscious of the time as well and we'll still get quite a lot of questions and members want to come in. Okay, so I'll wrap this up into one question if I can. Partner agencies, I think, have real challenges in terms of getting through. They've said that in the survey work that you've done. I'm just keen to know what has been done there. The other issue that I want to raise is that, as MSPs, we don't have a dedicated line that we can contact our offices can where we receive issues from constituents. That is something that the DWP does do. I just wonder what consideration might have been given to that. Thank you. I'll pick up on the point on the partner's contacting on clients' behalf. We have updated our guidance for our client-facing colleagues regarding client representatives and we have published that guidance on our corporate website. So there's lots of guidance on client representation, including third-party representatives now. We've shared that with our stakeholders right across our stakeholder groups. That has been published in October, November last year. However, we do acknowledge that welfare advisers have faced difficulties with delays, so that new guidance, I'm sure, will support that much more clearly in terms of what they can contact us about on behalf of their client. If I need to pick up on the MSP point, that's okay. We do have an MSP line, which is available for MSPs and constituent workers to contact us, so that is available. Some of the feedback we've had recently is around whether we can accept email in terms of direct correspondence. We are able to do that in certain instances through our chief executive mailbox, but that is in certain instances. It's something that we're actively looking at. Thanks for the clarity. I think it was email. I was referring to that as helpful. Okay. Thanks very much. I'm now going to invite Katie Clarkin, who's joining us remotely. Thank you very much. I'd like to ask what Social Security Scotland is doing to ensure that all client-facing staff know how to refer clients with disabilities to the voiceability advocacy services. Thank you for the question. We have produced internal guidance for our client-facing staff, and that provides details on the advocacy service and how it supports people with disabilities to access and apply for our benefits. The guidance also provides details on how to make a direct referral to voiceability via an online referral portal. The client-facing staff will raise awareness of the service when appropriate for clients on the phone. Are you convinced that that's working well? Do you see any problems? No, we continue to work with policy officials, and voiceability is a contract managed by Scottish Government colleagues. Our own local delivery teams do interact with voiceability, voiceability interact with our stakeholders quite significantly, and we have seen clients being referred through third-party partners, too. 100% of those referrals received from Social Security Scotland and others have went forward into a case in the last quarter. Thank you very much. I'm now moving on to the theme of case transfer as well, and I'm going to invite Jeremy Balfour in. Thank you again, convener. I think that there were 350,000 cases in total to be transferred from DWP into Social Security Scotland, and I suppose that I should just declare at this point that I am on PIP and waiting to be transferred. My understanding is from your figures that 74,785 have been completed, so that leaves 275,000 roughly by the end of next year. For my basic arithmetic, that means that you're going to have to do 13,750 cases a month to reach that target. Will you do it? What I would say is that probably there is reference in the Spice Brief to Anodic Scotland report, which expresses some concern around that. I would say that we have moved on quite a bit since that report was written and taken on board some of the recommendations. In terms of the case transfer and its totality, I think it's around a bit 700,000 individuals who are transferring into our system. Of course, we'll check that if I've got that wrong, we can write to you and confirm, and we are absolutely prioritising that safe and secure transfer. What I would say is that we are absolutely on track to do that as per our plans and our plans that we're working with DWP by the end of 2025. That's not to say that it's not significant and it's not complex, and we haven't had some of the challenges that you would expect around about a huge interface of data between two Government departments, but we've learned from those, and every time we've done it, we've iterated and we've continuously improved. The volumes that we're transferring monthly now are much greater than they were for child. Child disability payment case transfer is complete, case transfer is for all disability payments going well and is going to plan, and the arrangements are in place to start the transfer of care support payment from this month, I think. Again, it would be interesting to get the figures. Could you give us, again, not today, but in writing, a breakdown of what have been monthly transfers for the last 12 months, and what do you expect to be the monthly transfers for this calendar year, so how many are you expecting to do in February, March, April, May, June etc., because obviously at the moment you say you're on target, but from the figures we've got, it would look like if you continued at the pace you're continuing at the moment, you're going to be well short. So presumably there's going to be an improvement over the next 18 months. It would be interesting to see how you're modelling my 18 months with all the actual work that you've got on as well. I think that in terms of the modelling, and the technical support around that, that's probably something for our programme colleagues within the social security directorate, but that's absolutely fine, so we can clarify some of that and put it in a note to committee if that's helpful. Thank you, convener. Okay, yep, that would be really helpful. And then moving on again to estimating levels of fraud and error as well, I'm going to invite Bob Dorison, thanks. Yeah, thanks, convener. Good morning. I understand those levels of fraud, I hope, are relatively low, as far as we know, in relation to the system, but that has to be a robust process in procedures there anyway. In this case, we shouldn't be considering legislation in relation to social security, so I'll have to require clients to provide information for audit purposes. How does the agency intend to use those new powers proportionately and appropriately to help to estimate client-induced fraud and error? Thank you, Mr Dorison. Probably, as part of my responsibilities in social security Scotland, I'll look after counter fraud and error. This is a response to a recommendation that Audit Scotland have made over a number of years. In fact, I think I've spoken to this committee about that Audit Scotland recommendation, that we need to understand the levels of fraud and error in our caseload. We had started work on that back in 2020, and then Covid happened, and all our analyst resource was pushed on to other priorities, as one might expect. It was required. Post Covid, we've got those analysts back, and we have started work on producing the methodology to prepare the statistical estimates. They are statistical estimates, so this is not a deterrence for fraud and error. This is an audit process to understand our caseload and understand the statistical estimates of fraud and error that might be in our caseload. As it stands today, we rely heavily on the DWP-prepared statistics. Effectively, as Mr Balfour has touched on, we are engaged in case transfer, so Social Security Scotland did not make the decision. DWP made the decision, so its rates of fraud and error apply to the Social Security Scotland caseload post transfer. Over time, our rate of fraud and error, which might be different from DWP's, will enter our caseload. It will take a number of years for that to happen, as effectively the stock of cases flows out of eligibility in cases before. I apologise for cutting across you. I suppose we'll get to this in a bit more detail at a later date anyway, because you might give an example of the kind of client information that you might require in order to ensure not to interrogate that individual, but to use their data to get a feeling that fraud looks like within the claimants to the agency more generally. Can you give an actual example and then we can move on to the next question? The key point is interaction with the client. That is the key difference between a measure of official error and a measure of client and just error or fraud. We must speak to the client because we will have data on our system that may or may not be current. It may or may not have been updated by the client in the last number of years, and we need to speak to the client to understand what you told us two years ago or five years ago or ten years ago. Is that still the case? That legislation will allow us to interact with the client. That would be done proportionately and respectfully, and it would be a reasonable request to make of the client. Those are requests that other benefit organisations carry out, and it is the only way of measuring fraud and error because clients would self-select out. The values of dignity, fairness and respect will be right through those processes, and no one will lose eligibility as a result of being in this sample. The agency's existing processes will apply. Moving on. In the year ahead, we will see the completion of the roll-out of care support payment following the pilot, but we will also see to pension age new benefits being introduced. I am conscious that the case load for pension age winter heating payments will be around £1 million. That is far in excess of any other benefit that Social Security Scotland had to cope with. I am not casting any aspersions, but it is very reasonable for us to ask are you prepared for that? Are you confident? Is planning going well? In thinking about this, it is probably one of those ones that, just in terms of that assurance and that fuller assurance, we would perhaps like to provide some written advice to you, if that is helpful. However, it is worth saying in relation specifically to pension age winter heating payment. It is not an application-based payment as such, so we have experience of doing that in the past, specifically around about winter heating payment. That is the obvious example. There is an awful lot of learning in there. The case load, yes, is a big number, but in relative terms, so is the case load for winter heating payment. We have the experience of processing those payments, and we have been able to do that successfully. This is the second year that we have been doing that. Planning is on-going. It is probably not happening directly with ourselves at the moment more in a policy and programme context in relation to some of the technology. If it is okay to find with members, we propose perhaps to write to you on that one. I think that we would welcome that, Mr McPhill, but I am taking from your comments your making the point that, while the scale is substantial, the complexity does not give you any concerns at this stage? I am not downplaying the complexity of anything that we do, but it is a known entity. While it is a big number, I think that we understand how we will deal with that, and we have plans in place at the moment as to how we deal with that. I will then focus on how you can improve your systems as well. I will invite in Marie McNeir. I have some questions on how cases are processed and relating to rediff terminations as well, something that I pursued with you previously. How are emerging timely illness cases dealt with if they are identified as part of the transfer process, given that the ward can be more generous with ADP as opposed to PIP? Is this in relation to redeterminations? Sorry, I will just clarify the question. I will be following up with that. This is in relation to terminally ill cases. That are transferring? Yes, they are transferring, so they are always picked up through the transfer process. Right, absolutely. I do not have that information to hand right at this minute, but I am happy to update you in order to know if that is acceptable. No, that would be really helpful. I am very interested in that. On to the issue of redetermination. How many unsuccessful decisions are ending up at redetermination and appeal? If you do not have that figure, can you write to the committee again? I am very interested in that. I do have that figure. Our latest publication was 13.5 per cent of first decisions, which reach a redetermination and a smaller percentage there after a reach appeal. We all believe in a human rights approach, so obviously redetermination and appeal is a strong part of that, but it is being suggested to me that Social Security Scotland is acting the way that deters claimants from pursuing a challenge to negative decisions. Can you comment on this, and if it is not the case, can you talk us through how claimants are assisting in pursuing their rights to redetermination and appeal? Absolutely, thank you. A redetermination form is included in all of our first decision letters, so all our applicants, all our clients who receive a decision letter receive that information on how to apply for a redetermination and thereafter appeal. That letter signposts our clients to access support on our corporate website, but also through citizen advice and other stakeholders, so every client that receives a first decision letter does receive that details, and thereafter there is support from a dedicated team on redeterminations that will support the client through that conversation, and we do have regular phone contact with our clients during the redetermination and the appeal. I'm sure that we'll have to take this up offline with him. I think that that concludes all our questions for today, unless anyone—I can see Jeremy. Do you want to come in, Jeremy? I would be more behaved convenient. Absolutely, we've got a bit of time and hands anyway. Just very quickly, I would be interested just going back to your previous decision, because we were moving on quite quickly. In regard to your client's surveys, obviously we as MSPs only get the bad news, and Twitter is obviously not part of the best place to look at what's happening. How do you decide who gets to fill out an assessment of how you did? Is that a random selection? Obviously your figures are very high about how people have been very pleased with your services, so how did you choose those people to fill out reforms? As far as I understand it—again, I'll clarify, I'm wrong—everybody gets the opportunity to do that, so anybody who goes through the process gets the opportunity, both at the application stage and at the decision stage as well, to feedback on both their interaction with us and their experience of us as an organisation. It isn't discriminant in terms of we only send that to certain individuals, so that's not the case. Okay, thank you. Sorry, I think that concludes the question. Ah, right, okay. So Camilla would like to come in. Sorry, what did you just—you wanted to comment? All right, okay, sorry, my apologies. A bit of confusion there, my apologies. So can Social Security Scotland give examples of the type of system improvements as well that are actually being prioritised as part of your on-going strategy moving forward, particularly to the SPM case management system? Absolutely, I can do some of that. So just in very broad terms, so I won't go into the technical detail on this, but in recent system releases we've focused on automation, where that's possible, so trying to reduce manual workarounds. We've also taken steps to improve accessibility to benefit client experience, both in our internal systems, but predominantly in our online platforms for disability benefits. Beyond that, there's probably quite an awful lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, which is quite technical in nature, but enhances the system infrastructure and security so that what we're doing can remain critical and safe, because that kind of system security and infrastructure piece, and I'm sure we've seen various different things in the press recently in terms of cyberattacks. Critically important, we do an awful lot of that through the course of the year. That stuff doesn't get seen, to be fair we don't shout about it quite naturally, but there's an awful lot of that in terms of how we're continuously improving our systems as well. I don't know if that is what you were looking for, it shouldn't be the most exciting answer, but it is the reality of what we're doing. I imagine then that the priorities would change, depends on what benefits are coming through and what's transitioning as well. How often then do you look at that? Is it one of those KPIs that you're looking at on a regular basis? In terms of that system development piece, we clearly work with our colleagues within the programme on those main releases of technology. Because we are an organisation that is moving forward and expanding services are quite often focused on the next thing that we need to deliver. I think you're speaking about that continuous improvement cycle. We do that iteratively, so we engage with our, whether it be through client panels, whether it be through engaging with our people, whether it be through forums like this in terms of the feedback that we get, that helps us prioritise the actions that we're going to take and the budget we're going to spend on continuous improvement activity. The example that I gave around reducing manual process and automation, that's clearly something that we're doing, not just to drive efficiency and improve performance, but to support our staff, use our systems and use them in a way that's more efficient and better and job enriching. One of the things that you've come out with the Audit Scotland recommendations as well was in terms of technical doubt. Can you give a clearer idea of the scale and nature of that at the moment and how you're going to move on to that going forward? I'll take that to the camera, if that's okay. I guess that technical debt is a consequence of agile working. We expedite delivery and that will have consequences down the line, and usually we know about that. The way we address that is to build on what Allie said as part of our process of continuous improvement. I've already said this morning that we work really closely with social security programme colleagues. We have a single prioritised backlog of the things that we wish to do in future. Anything that is identified in terms of technical debt or other types of improvement, future automation, it's all added on to that backlog and we jointly work through it. It will be an on-going process. We still have benefits to transfer, so we won't probably have a real sense of the totality of technical debt until we're through that finalised process of devolution, but we certainly do understand it and it's continuing to evolve our understanding all the time. Okay, thank you very much. I believe Bob would like to come in with a small supplementary in the context of the time, Bob. Can you notice a minute supplementary and it was inspired by your question. The community was asking about systems improvements that are prioritised. I'm just conscious that we've got a large workforce in Social Security Scotland, a lot of them moved over from DWP, took the opportunity for new innovations. What role does the workforce have to suggest innovations in systems improvements? Because the other one's at the co-face that actually has to deal with the reality of how the systems work. Anything you could put on the record in relation to that, I think would be quite helpful. Absolutely. As you would expect with any organisation on our side, that continuous improvement cycle is absolutely embedded in staff feedback in relation to what we're doing. Actually, we were speaking to Andy McClintock, our chief digital officer yesterday, and he is being very visible around about owning that and is doing staff, I think he's calling them road shows, over the course of the next couple of months so that even at that level he can hear directly from staff in terms of what they're doing, how they're engaging with the systems and to be completely open to some of the challenges they may face and engaging with that. That cascades all the way down in terms of how we want to engage with this as an organisation. That concludes our questions and I'd like to thank you all for attending today. This concludes this evidence session and our public business for today. We will now move to the private session to consider the remaining items on the agenda and close the public business for today.